The present invention relates to an electronic device controlling apparatus and an electronic device controlling method for centralized control of electronic devices installed in rooms of a house, such as television receivers, for example.
It has become common to use in each house a plurality of so-called AV (Audio Visual) devices such as television receivers, VTRs (Video Tape Recorders), reproducing devices and recording and reproducing devices for DVD (Digital Versatile Disc), recording and reproducing devices using a hard disk, and the like.
For example, there have been an increasing number of houses where an AV device to be shared by family members is installed in a living room and an AV device for personal use by each family member is installed in each room, providing an environment where a television broadcast program, contents recorded on a VTR, a DVD, or a hard disk, and the like can be reproduced and viewed in any room.
In a house with a recording and reproducing device using a hard disk as a recording medium, a broadcast program is read and reproduced while the broadcast program is recorded on the hard disk, and thus so-called time shift viewing is realized through the processing of recording the broadcast program on the hard disk.
In the case of this time shift viewing, when a user leaves the room while viewing a broadcast program, the user performs a predetermined operation to continue recording but temporarily stop reproduction. When the user returns to the room, the user restarts reproduction of the broadcast signal reproduced from the recording medium at the time of leaving the room, and the user can thereby view the broadcast program without missing a part of the broadcast program.
Thus, there have been an increasing number of houses with an environment using various AV devices in a plurality of rooms to reproduce contents such as a broadcast program, a movie, or the like as required by each family member for viewing.
Even when an AV device is installed in each room of one house, as described above, the AV device in each room only functions independently in each room. It is difficult to organically connect and control the AV device installed in each room, and it has not been implemented.
Hence, in the case of the above-mentioned time shift viewing, the user always needs to return to the AV device by which the user viewed the broadcast program. When the user continues to view the broadcast program viewed in a living room to his/her room, for example, the user cannot view the broadcast program during a period of time taken to go from the living room to his/her room. That is, time shift viewing between AV devices is not realized.
While an AV device is installed in each room, a hard disk recording and reproducing device, a DVD player, or the like is not used at all times in each room. Therefore, by allowing a hard disk recording and reproducing device, a DVD player, or the like to be shared from each room, it is possible to construct an AV system in each house more inexpensively.